1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed generally to an ejection tray which includes one or more spring-loaded flaps for supporting recording media ejected from a printer. The one or more flaps are connected to the tray such that, upon the ejection tray sliding out of the printer, the flaps are biased upward to a height roughly corresponding to the printer's media eject port. The flaps are shaped such that, upon contacting the printer, the flaps fold automatically.
2. Description Of The Related Art
Ink jet printers typically include a tray for receiving ejected recording media, such as paper. As shown in the figures, ink jet printers typically position the paper ejection tray at or near the bottom of the printer. Traditionally, paper ejected from the printer merely fell onto the ejection tray. It was determined, however, that merely allowing paper to fall onto the ejection tray could adversely affect the quality of printed images.
More specifically, when a sheet of paper is ejected from a printer, the leading edge of the sheet bends. This bending can cause wet ink on the sheet to dry incorrectly. Moreover, this bending of the leading edge causes portions of the sheet still in the printer to move upwardly. During printing, these portions will be moved closer to a print element in the printer. As a result, uneven images will be printed on the paper.
In order to address the foregoing drawback, printer manufacturers included supports on their paper trays for receiving ejected recording media. While such supports address the problems noted above, conventional supports have their own drawbacks. Specifically, in conventional trays, the supports must be manually positioned during tray set-up, and manually re-positioned during tray storage. As a result, set-up and storage of conventional paper ejection trays can be a cumbersome, and sometimes difficult process.
Moreover, supports on conventional ejection trays do not move downwardly when additional paper is ejected. As a result, conventional ejection trays are able to hold only a limited number of sheets of paper. If more than that number of sheets need to be printed, currently-printing sheets merely attempt to force previously-printed sheets off of the paper ejection tray. This action can cause paper jams, particularly if the previously-printed sheets are not easily movable. In addition, this action causes pages in a print job to become out of order, which can be a problem, especially in cases where pages do not include page numbers.
Thus, there exists a need for a paper ejection tray for a printer, which is relatively easy to set up and store, and which can support a large number of sheets of paper.